


Among the Wires

by FullFuffledMess



Series: Among the Wires and shorts [1]
Category: Among Us (Video Game)
Genre: How Do I Tag, alien imposters, first fic, imposter POV, skeld is a cargo ship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:41:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 12,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26533045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FullFuffledMess/pseuds/FullFuffledMess
Summary: They have the means to get there. They have no reason to turn back.They don’t know we’re among them.
Series: Among the Wires and shorts [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1991158
Comments: 42
Kudos: 162





	1. Whaaaaat captain?

**Author's Note:**

> Hi this is my first fic uuuuuuuhhhh yeah

The nine members boarded one of the three rooms inside The Skeld not included in the main floor blueprint, while slightly smaller they were just as important. The other rooms were used to keep the ship alive, and the upper rooms were used to keep the crew alive, which was arguably just as important. 

Immediately entering the ship would present the “safety room” , a room the crew would sit in for take off, landing, and “space turbulence”, It was equipped with seats and straps. To the right of this room is the bunks, for sleeping of course, and again to the right is a slightly larger room for the kitchen. At least they call it a kitchen, it’s really just a room to keep the food away from the toxic air that may exist in the ship. Baggies of food are kept in containers, to be pulled inside of suits and eaten from within said suits.  
A ladder leads down into cafeteria, and the part of the ship the crew was in for more than 18 hours a day.

Or however long, days didn’t matter on these missions.  
-Speaking of missions... part one is now complete, huh?- Pink thought as the ship took off with a rumble. He shifted to be more comfortable in the suit, slithering in his seat. 

It seemed that the others were restless as well, Yellow was kicking his legs, and Green was tugging at her suit. Blue looked nervous, and to be honest so did Pink. He was frayed. It was his first time on one of these ships, according to the information about the ship it was a mostly new crew but had an experienced captain and first mate, which was a bad thing.  
Pink was an imposter, tasked with slowing down the human race as much as possible in order to help his own. He shifted the wires in his suit around more, trying to perfect the shape of the others’ suits. 

Imposters were bacteria filled wires, each strand of bacteria acting as a hive mind to take over wires and connect with them electrically to form a body. There were human scientists who were able to explain the science of the imposter bacteria, but most imposters didn’t care to learn. Pink was one of those. Something something currents something something charge something something and he’s able to exist. Simple as that.

There was a big CER-CLUNK! as the ship made it out of atmosphere and into space. Everyone floated briefly in their seats before the generators kicked in and they returned to normal gravity. There was a flurry of movement in safe room as multiple colored suits got ready for the trip ahead, and began to make their way to the main floor for task assignments. 

There was an awkward silence as the crew gathered around the meeting table. Everyone looked at each other, although it was hard to tell what they were thinking, as the visors on the suits were opaque to protect human’s eyes from bright lasers.

White made a little cough which was muffled slightly by the suit, and said “Well?”  
“Well what?” Came from the orange suit across from White. 

“Sir most of us are new, we thought you gave us task assignments?” Asked Blue, and Pink had to agree, he thought was told it was the normal procedure on a human space craft. What if they had already found out? An experienced captain must have already found them out.

Pink glanced over at Red, the other imposter, but Red seemed cool and collected. How did he do that? 

“Oh uh, I’m not the captain?” White replied, looking around the table. “Who is?” 

It was dead silent in the cafeteria. 

“Do we at least have a first mate?” Asked Yellow hopefully. “If we had a first mate they would’ve noticed the captain missing Yellow.” Orange responded sarcastically. 

“Does anyone know where we’re going at least?” Stammered Yellow, and White held up a packet of papers in response.  
“I made this trip two weeks ago with the same captain and first mate that were supposed to be here. They own multiple suits so I thought they had just changed out for different ones. I brought the instructions I received last time with me in case.” 

“Good thing” murmured Black, breathing a sigh of relief. They at least had something to go off of. There was no point in turning the ship around if they thought they could pull it off together. Good. 

They don’t know we’re among them.


	2. Whaaaaaat tablet?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 bay beeeeee
> 
> Officially farther than I’ve gotten in literally any story I’ve written ever.

After a slightly panicked discussion, the crew came to a consensus that White had been on a ship the most, having made three trips , one of which was on The Skeld. He was elected Captain, and Black was made first-mate. She had been on two missions, both not on the Skeld but one with White, making her the best pick. Purple and Orange claimed to have been on a ship once before, but didn’t have any proof, and Yellow, Red, Pink, Blue, and Green admitted to being completely new. 

White explained that this was important to know because the circumstances they had been placed in indicated that there were imposters on board. Another ship in their quadrant, The Scalloway, had been wiped out by imposters just last week, leaving them needing to train new recruits. Things had been a mess around the 3rd Quadrant cargo HQ for the last week. While the whole not having a captain thing may be an accident, it could also be another attack.

Therefore the buddy system was put in place. White made sure to explain how important the system was on this trip.  
“If someone turns up missing and you’re their buddy, there’s an ejection room with your name on it. So keep an eye on each other. We don’t need any unnecessary losses” .  
And that was that. 

Pink, White, and Black are stood in the cafeteria still, all of the others being sent out for tasks with buddys.  
Pink just hoped that Red was smart enough not to kill Yellow, while he did seem like an easy kill White was surprisingly on top of keeping track of things, and would notice. 

White looked down at the task list and then back up at Black and Pink. “Alrighty, that leaves us three together. Black, you check up on the wires in here and I’ll teach Pink how to do the downloads over there”, and White beckoned Pink to follow. 

As Pink walked he took to thinking, the trip was going to take multiple days, but generally all the killing had to be done in one. They could even kill everyone on the way back if they were sneaky enough, but Pink doubted they could stay hidden that long. Really they just needed to gain trust to let the group think they could drop the buddy system. All they need to do is remain inconspicuous— “Ok, so you’ve got your tablet right?” White asked.

Uh.  
He did not, in fact, have a tablet. They had tablets? There goes being inconspicuous.  
“Uh, no? Was I supposed to?”

White face palmed the glass of his helmet and sighed, “you’re one of the new ones yeah?”. 

“Yeah”.

“Great. They shove us into a ship without a captain and don’t even give us the proper equipment. HQ is more of a mess than I thought”. Pink’s wires slithered around uncomfortably, but he was glad White hadn’t noticed how suspicious that was. 

“For what it’s worth I think you’re doing a pretty good job on your own, the buddy system is sure to keep us all safe”, Pink was hoping to score some trust points with that line, and he was right.

White sort of paused and said, “oh uh, thanks, it’s mostly repeating what I’ve heard from the last captain”. Then White reached into his bag and pulled out a tablet, handing it to Pink. “We’ll just have you use mine for now, since I’ll have more duties as a captain you’ll just take my tasks that require the tablet”.

Pink must have seemed worried about extra tasks because White reassured him “don’t worry it’s just plugging it into this outlet here, then waiting for about ten minutes and plugging it in somewhere else a couple times a day. Nothing too intensive”. Sweet relief. 

As White was showing him what cord to use and what app to open on the tablet, Black walked over having already inspected the wires. “Good news cool dudes, the wires in here are fine, they’re like, all tangly and wirey and stuff”. 

“Incredible, thank you Black.” Huffed White, probably rolling his eyes. If Pink had eyes he would also roll them. “Yeah whatever. Aw you got stuck with the download upload tasks Pink? Sucks to suck I guess”, she snarked, “wait— is that White’s tablet? Dude doesn’t even have his own tablet, talk about sus am I right White?” 

UH. Oh no. Uh oh. Pink took a step back, Black saw what White didn’t. She was gonna— “Black! look at how worried you made him! Pink, no one thinks you’re an imposter. The HQ’s incompetency is a constant that we all have to deal with sometimes”.

Black nodded her head, “Oh yeah sorry dude, I was really just joking, I forgot you’ve never been on a crew before, we have little jokes”.

Pink needed a break, within the last fifteen minutes he had thought he was a goner three times. That’s too many for his liking.

“It’s fine just as long as you know calling someone out with no evidence? Kinda sus.” said Red, walking into the room with Yellow. The monotone voice Red said that in kinda freaked Pink out, Red was really gonna just lay that insult on the first-mate, huh?

Black, however, took it in stride and laughed heartily, “AY! Red gets the idea Pink! But don’t joke around too much we do still have to be careful”.

“Yeah, sure. We’re done with our tasks in the Reactors. Is it time for lunch?” Red asked.

Barely a day into the trip. White and Black trust them some. 

They still don’t know we’re among them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any nit-picks or criticism is welcome and appreciated :)


	3. Whaaaaat wires?

After an awkward ‘lunch’ of stuffing a bag in his suit and pretending to be eating the contents for about thirty minutes, Pink left to upload the data from the cafeteria into the admin room, Red offered to go with him, wanting to talk. Pink assumed it wasn’t a friendly sort of chat, probably more of a ‘what’s the game plan’ sort of chat.

Pink sat against the wall of the entrance to the admin room, having already plugged in the tablet to the wall, letting the data seep into the system. Red stood next to him, shuffling awkwardly, then whispered, “So Pink, actually doing the tasks they give you?” 

“I have to, they’re going to notice if I don’t. White was standing over my shoulder”.

“Well he’s not here now is he? You’re pathetic”.

“That’s a bad game plan they’ll totally see we aren’t doing the tasks. I’m trying to earn their trust first”. 

“We have all the trust we need Pink, they think we’re newbies. We can probably get away with anything especially since White isn’t a real captain”. 

“He sure has the ability to be one”. 

“Well then we’ll just have to make sure he’s taken out first. What will these idiots do without their precious pitiful leader? They’ll scramble”.

Red’s head turned as footsteps came down the hall, and then whipped back to Pink. “Listen new guy. It’s obvious that I’m the one who knows what we’re doing. Get Black and White in a room with us. We can kill both of them together, and then it’ll be easy from there,” he turned to leave but then added one more yelled whisper “and stop doing tasks!”.

Red joined up with yellow walking down the hallway, pretending to use the buddy system again. A few moments later, the tablet app dinged, signaling that the upload had completed. Pink unplugged it from the wall and walked back into cafeteria to find White and Black. 

Black waved at him as he walked in, “hey dude, we’re gonna head down to electrical, we all have tasks there”. 

Black, White and Pink made their way to electrical, squeezing past the piled boxes in storage. Stepping into electrical made Pink go crazy almost immediately. There were wires hanging everywhere. His instincts told him to rip the room apart and infect, but he held himself back. That would probably compromise the ship then they’d all die.

In the back there were several panels, each of them indicating a different task. Pink went over to the far left corner of the room to download information. While he was plugging in the cord and White and Black were trying to pry open their panels, Orange and Blue trudged in. “The stupid reactor panel won’t do a start up. The button passcode is confusing, do either of you know how to do it?” whined Orange. 

Black sighed and walked away with them, toward the reactors. At least Pink wasn’t the only one having trouble with tasks. After Pink plugged in the tablet, white asked “Hey Pink, since Black is out at reactors can you check the wires for her? The reactor start up takes a bit”.

“Sure I can take a look at them”.

Pink swung open the panel in the wall, revealing multiple rows of wires that were bundled together. Pink took Red’s advice, not really looking too close at the wires, after all, White was too busy trying to do some task that required timing. A skill he obviously lacked, Pink could hear hushed profanities coming from his right. Plus, the panel from the wall had swung out blocking White’s view of Pink.

But Pink did notice that one of the wires had been cut away, the blue one, leaving the copper inside exposed. Someone had sliced off a bit of wires it seemed, it had to have been Red.

Suddenly Pinks instincts were telling him to grab some of the wires for himself. Just take some! Like Red did! Who’s gonna find out anyway? White can’t even see what you’re doing. One of Pink’s wires slid out of his suit wielding a large kitchen knife. 

He pushed the front most wires out of the way and chopped some of the ones in the back, quickly slipping them into his suit to infect. And then the knife followed suit. 

“You’re doing a lot of rummaging over there is something wrong?”

Crap. Make something up quick!

“ Uh, yeah I noticed his wire is cut?”

There was a silence before White turned and walked over shaking.   
“What?”

“Yeah I went to check the others and—“  
Pink moved the front wires back revealing the cut wires in the back.

White let out a shaky breath, but said “Nice catch Pink, this looks like the work of an imposter trying to sabotage our wires and hiding it. They were sloppy though that one in the front gives it away”.  
Pink gave a stiff nod.

“However”, White continued, “it does mean theres at least one imposter on board. Well fix this then call a meeting”.

Pink gave another nod, shaking a bit. That was close. 

“Hey it’s okay. We’ll make it through this”.

After patching up the wires with a weird tape, White and a Pink headed up to the cafeteria to report the wires.

It’s official.

They know we’re among them.


	4. Whaaaaaat plan?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meeting time.

White and Pink broke into a sprint coming up to cafeteria, almost slamming into Blue as she left admin. White flipped up the little glass square on the middle table and brought down his fist on the button. A loud buzzer sounded throughout the ship and a red light shone in the halls for a second, the indicator for an emergency meeting.

By the time everyone had gotten to the table White had stopped shaking, getting a hold of himself for the news he was about the break to the rest of the crew. Little glass windows in multicolored colors peered at each other, already guessing what this meeting was about. 

“There’s an imposter among us”.

And there was chaos. Yellow started weeping, Purple was shocked, Orange started yelling something incomprehensible, Green looked paralyzed. Red and Pink shared a glance. It was going to happen eventually, they just hoped that it would’ve happened after White was already gone. 

“What’re we gonna do Red?” Sobbed Yellow, hugging Red who looked like he wanted to die right about now.

“Seriously? A-Actually? You’re like... kidding r-right?” Purple stuttered

“WHO IS IT I WILL TURN THEM INSIDE OUT-“, was pretty much the only understandable thing Orange said. 

“Everyone calm down, no one’s dead yet, and if we do this in a smart manner, no one will die”. 

White was wrong, if they played smart two of them would die. However, White swung his arm around Pink’s shoulder. 

“Pink here found a lot of wires cut in electrical. We’re going to have to— hang on let me remember the training”

At least White trusts him. White had actually been very nice to Pink, but that couldn’t stop Pink from doing his job.

There was a moment when everyone collected themselves, Yellow was still crying, but it was quieter and Red was comforting him. White looked in thought, coming up with a plan. He beckoned Black over to him.

They turned away from the group, and whispered amongst themselves quickly. Bouncing ideas off of each other. When they came to a consensus they turned back to the group. 

“Okay. Since were already almost done for the day, we’re going to stay in groups of four and five. Who has tasks in the left of the ship still?”, asked White, completely calm now. He was acting of corse but it seemed to work, everyone was reassured by it. 

“Well I’m taking over starting the reactor for Blue and Orange. It’s gonna reset because of the meeting”, Black stated. 

White nodded, “Right, and me and Pink still need to compete our tasks in electrical. So we need one more”. 

“Oh,” said Red, and Pink could hear the hidden malice in his voice, “I need to check wires in security”. 

“Cool so we’ll go over to left side then all of you finish your tasks in right side. Don’t let your friends walk alone or work alone. Make sure they’re actually doing the tasks”, White took a quick glance around the table, “We’ll call another meeting at the end of this task rotation to make more solid plans”. 

And with that White ended the meeting. 

——————————————————————————

Black, White, Red, and Pink headed to the reactor room. Two imposters and two Crewmates. Waking side by side down the hallway. 

If it had been just one imposter then maybe Black and White could’ve taken them out, but two imposters trained to kill were neigh impossible to beat. Especially with the crew all being newbies. 

As they turned the corner from upper engine into the next hallway, Red gave Pink a nudge on the shoulder. Silent instructions were sent between them. 

Double kill. Reactor room. No mercy. 

The four colored suits rounded the last corner into the whirring room, glowing a bright blue from the machinery. White and Black stepped up to the three by three buttoned panel and sighed, then began pressing buttons slowly. 

Red put hand up.

Three fingers up.

Three.

The three of them had been in a little group beforehand. They trusted him most. White especially, Black scared Him a bit.

Two. 

Two imposters in the room. The possible final resting place of the two crewmates in front of them. How unfortunate.

One.

There was one way this could end. Pink had been thinking about the plan Red laid out for them and it just wouldn’t work. Well it could but that would rely on all of the members of The Skeld being  
A. In the right place at the right time   
And   
B. Incredibly stupid.

If Pink and Red took out these two right now, the next logical step would be to go to electrical and turn out the lights. As lights go out, take vents to the other side of the ship and kill two of the crew in the dark then hope they can make it back to the other side and pretend they didn’t know what happened. 

However they would also be the only ones with access to electrical. This was a dumb plan. But nothing was going to change Red’s plan. Red was too stubborn.

Well if both of them are going to die anyways, Pink would like to live a little longer.

And so as Red started to lunge at White, Pink kicked him as hard as he could and yelled “WHITE! Red just tried to attack you!”, and held his foot of top of Red. 

White turned and saw Red struggling under Pink, and trusting Pink more, said “Oh! Good god Pink! You saved my life!”.

“WHAT? No!”’ screamed Red, struggling more, “PINK! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”.

“You can’t fool us Red, Pink’s been with us this whole time. We’ve been watching him carefully we know to trust him”, Black said, rushing to help Pink restrain Red. 

With Pink and Black taking Red’s arms, and white hugging his midsection to keep the wires in, they slowly made their way to cafeteria with the writhing mass of wires that was now contorting the Red space suit.

Pink pressed the button, and watched as the five other crew ran into the cafeteria, Red tried to reassemble into something resembling a human shape and kept wiggling in their grasp. Once everyone was seated White started “Pink stopped Red from snapping my neck just a few minutes ago, and then Red tried to pin it on Pink”.

Blue shook her head, “That doesn’t even make any sense, Pink has been with the two confirmed crew on the ship the whole time, he’s basically third most trusted on everyone’s list”. 

“Plus he found and reported the cut wires”, chimed in Purple.

“I can attest to Red being weird”, Yellow squeaked out as Red tried to lunge at him but was held back.

“We really don’t need anyone to attest to anything,” black nodded up to Red, “this guy felt like a bunch of snakes in a suit while we were carrying him over here”.

“All in favor of showing Red to the ejection room?”, Questioned White.

All hands went up immediately. 

“NO. YOU STUPID HUMANS. I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE! YOU HEAR ME!” Was generally all the crew got to hear dragging Red up the ladder and into the safe room. 

Red was thrown into a little room off of the safe room, through the door of which could still be heard, 

“I’LL KILL ALL OF YOU. EVEN PINK. YOU HEAR ME PINK! I’M GOING TO SHRED YOUR WIRES TO BITS—“

And then White hit a button, and a small whooshing noise was heard. 

Red was the Imposter.


	5. Whaaaaaat game?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What comes after the first imposter is found?

Everyone had gathered back around the meeting table for a small break. Most members of The Skeld were still in shock that they had managed to catch an imposter, a task that was near impossible. Especially since no one—

“No one’s dead”.

Black lifted her head at the table and looked over to Green who had made that statement.

Green started giggling, and it must have been the first time Pink’s heard her speak the whole time.

“We did it guys we got an imposter and no one died!” Green said again, happier with each word.

It made Pink a little sick, but if he was being honest he wanted to celebrate too. No more having to deal with Red. Red had briefed him before they stepped onto the ship, informing Pink that he knew better than Pink because he was ‘older and more experienced’. Sure. Look where your stupid experience got you. Frozen in space.

As moods were lifted by Green’s optimistic tone, they were immediately dragged down again by Orange’s drawl.

“Don’t imposters usually come in twos or threes for crews this big?”

Then the cafeteria was thrown back to silence.

White sighed, “Yeah they do. We’re still gonna need to be careful. For now we should finish those tasks”. He hopped from the table, “come on, Black, Pink. Let’s go”.

With that, the three walked toward the reactor room in total silence. Pink watched Black and White start up the reactor, which required pressing several buttons in sequence depending on the flashes. Then they went to security where Black found that more of the wires had been cut away. They went to electrical to gather the tape they had used before.

“Do you think that those wires were also cut by Red?” asked Black on the way to electrical. Pink knew the answer, so he said “Yeah, probably”.

White said “Well we cant be certain about that, Red said he hadn’t checked those wires yet”.

“And what’s the chance that he was lying again? oh yeah all of it. All- all the chances. The. 100 percent.” , Black stumbled out.

They had a laugh about Black’s odd sentence as they made their way into the back of electrical. Pink picked up the tablet he left plugged in and put it in his suit’s pocket.

Black helped White figure out the timing for the dials, which happened with slightly less cursing this time. They all walked back toward security after collecting the tape, and popped open the panel for the wires.

Pink turned on the cameras as Black began patching the wires.

Green and blue were in the O2 room, Green pushing dead leaves out of the filter and into the garbage chute. Orange was sitting in the hallway between O2 and Weapons, probably observing both rooms at once.

Pink hopped off the chair after Black parched the wires and they headed for cafeteria.

All in all it was uneventful but still tense.

“What should we talk about in the meeting?” Asked white.

“Uuuuh probably what to do between the task rotations, we’ve still got two more until we make it to the off load ship” Black kicked her legs while sitting on the bench.

“What are we going to do?” Pink asked

What am _I_ going to do? Pink thought as he realized he made a fatal mistake in outing Red so fast. Sure Red wasn’t a mastermind but neither was Pink. Pink should’ve waited for Red to kill White before leaping into action, then they’d be without a leader _and_ trust Pink.

Oh well. White was nice company as Pink awaited his death in... oh, let’s say two task cycles? When they boarded the off-load ship they were going to be faced with at least three military guard on that ship. And considering the happenings in The Skeld Pink was sure they’d figure him out eventually.

“Well for starters we should all stay in maybe two rooms. Probably the Kitchen and safety room, and only leave when necessary” replied White, not understanding that Pink wasn’t referring to the crew.

“Yeah. Seems good to me”.

“Yeah”.

“Good then we’re in agreement”.

The meeting was fast, with White explaining the reasoning behind staying in the upper rooms of The Skeld, and everyone climbing back up to sit down.

——————————————————

“Well this is boring” Orange said, lying on his side in the safety room.

Currently in the safety room was Pink, White, Purple, Blue, and Orange. Yellow, Black, and Green were in the kitchen. Everyone was sitting around for about 6ish hours while they waited for the next task rotation, and Orange was right, it was boring.

“Then why don’t we play a game?” AskedBlue.

“This isn’t a slumber party Blue, why would we play a game?”, replied Orange, who never actually seemed to get any less grumpy.

“We can do truth or dare, that seems—“

“Like not a good idea given our current situation”, White cut in.

Orange groaned, and silence ensued again. Pink didn’t know many games, he had seen the ‘arcade machines’ in the old abandoned human base he developed in, but the wires from the machines had already been taken from those, they were broken beyond repair. He didn’t understand the odd cartoons on them either.

The one game he did know was chicken, which, for the imposters was just a test of who’s system told them the situation was unsafe first. Chicken for imposters always had the same outcome due to their technological side.

Pink assumed that chicken was also off the games list that White would allow.

“We could play a word game”, said Purple, “the one word story. Everyone gets one word per turn and we have to make a story.”

White nodded his head, and the game was given the go ahead.

“Okay, we’ll go me, Orange, Blue, White, Pink. Ready? Once,” started Purple.

“There”

“Was”

“A”

“Very”

“Unfortunate”

“Idiot” 

“Who”

“Loved”

“Dogs!”

Finished Pink, excitedly. Pink had heard of dogs they seemed nice, except for the part where humans trained most space dogs specifically to find imposters.

“Pink are you an unfortunate idiot who loves dogs?” Orange snickered, and Blue gave him a shove.

“Yeah, I am”.

“We’ve got a dog lover among us”. White whispered.


	6. Whaaaaaaaat trust?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pink forgets to do a task™️

As the game continued on, all of the crew members gathered into the safety room, the unfortunate idiot had gotten married, had a daughter, and was currently in a heist involving something called an ostrich. From what Pink could gather, it was some type of bird.

A buzzer on the wall went off, and White got up to turn it off.

“Alright everyone, back to work for a while”.

They all shuffled out of the room, and Yellow, who had been writing down the story, set down his notebook and hurried after them. Down the ladder, and into cafeteria, they broke off into new groups and went to do their tasks.

Yellow, White, and Pink went together this time, Black opting to go with Orange and Blue to share her knowledge, and Purple took off to do tasks with Green.

White argued against the groups of two saying “it’s still unsafe to go with only one other person, there could still be another imposter on the ship”.

Orange argued against him, “look, imposters and humans don’t get along well I’m sure that if there was still an imposter here they’d be super rude and distant but everyone was bonding up in safety room just fine”.

“Yeah and the only one who’s been distant and disagreeable is Orange” Blue added, earning her a shove from Orange. 

Pink’s group went to storage first, to retrieve extra attachable wires. There had been enough imposter attacks in the past to know that wires would occasionally need replaced, and humans had come up with a way to easily replace them when needed.

“Good thing we keep an extra box of these” Pink thought aloud, and Yellow agreed, “Yeah, it makes more sense that there’s extras”.

The three of them went to electrical again,and White started on replacing all the wires, making a giant pile of torn wires on the ground. Meanwhile, Pink started downloading the data from the electrical room again. Movement of data from room to room was important apparently, Pink didn’t know why though.

As Pink set down the tablet, White motioned for him to come over.

“Yellow can watch that for you Pink. I’m going to trust you to take these torn wires to storage garbage chute and empty it”.

“Okay I can do that”, said Pink, gathering up the wires in his hands.

And as Pink walked towards the garbage chute, he couldn’t help but notice that in his hands were a lot of wires which probably wouldn’t be missed. It didn’t matter that they were torn. He made his way to the corner of the room and stuffed the wires in his suit, rearranging them 

To maintain his human shape, although it did look like he had gained weight.

Pink just had to hope that no one noticed that he got chubbier as he walked back to electric, forgetting to empty the garbage chute.

——————————————————

Still waiting for the tablet to be done downloading information, the three started talking.

“Why are there even vents on the floors of these ships?”

White turned his head toward Yellow, providing the answer, “I don’t know honestly. If I had to guess it’s that these ships were designed before imposters figured them out and could crawl into them”.

“What? Imposters can get into vents?” Squealed Yellow, his fear apparent in his voice.

“Yea they’re connected all over the ship right? That’s kind of concerning.” Added Pink.

“No no, not everywhere,” White corrected Pink, “Only a couple of the vents are connected and they all stay on the side of the ship the vent is located at”.

Pink chuckled, that meant that Red’s plan was even worse than he had thought. There would’ve been no way to get to the other side and back using vents. The others would’ve caught them.

“What’s funny about that?” Questioned White.

“I just think maybe we should keep that information private until it’s needed to be said, if there’s another imposter they may not know about the vents yet”, Pink picked up the tablet as it finished loading, unplugging it from the wall.

“Good call, thanks Pink”.

White turned toward Yellow, “you won’t say anything will you Yellow?”

“No”.

“Great. Let’s head to storage”.

In storage, Pink once again plugged in White’s tablet, while Yellow helped white fill up a gasoline container, to be taken to the ship’s engines.

Just then, Green and Purple meandered in, Purple going to the garbage chute to empty it.

“Oh Purple, Pink just emptied that, it shouldn’t get emptied again”.Yellow mentioned to Purple, who was about to pull the lever.

“What? But it says here last emptied seven hours ago”, Yellow tilted his head to the side and ran over, him and Purple puzzling over the panel that read out when tasks were done.

Shoot. He forgot to empty it.

“Pink didn’t you empty it?”

“I um, I think I put the wires in there?”

“But did you empty it?”

“I pressed the button?”

“The button just releases more garbage from the whole ship into the chute, which doesn’t do anything if you haven’t emptied the other chutes first, Pink”.

“Oh, then isn’t it a good thing that I didn’t do it? Now we can release all the garbage”.

White sighed and shook his head, “Yeah but it could’ve caused a back up you need to be more careful”.

Pink took in a shaky breath, and nodded, walking over to the garbage chute and pulling down the lever, glad that his lie worked again.

Orange and Blue had walked into the room, and were watching the trash float out into space through the small windows.

“Hmm odd. I didn’t see any wires in there Pink” Blue mentioned, turning to him.

“Wait! Yeah! That’s suspicious. Why weren’t there any wires in that trash?” Orange accused, and Blue shoved him for taking her accusation.

Oh. Okay great so. Oh no.

How was he supposed to respond to that?He should have emptied the trash when White asked him to!

“Look at how he stopped. That’s really suspicious I’m calling a meeting”, Blue decided, running toward cafeteria.

Everyone but White ran with her, White staying behind to chat with Pink.

“Pink, you did put the wires in there right?”

“Pink?”

Pink was doomed. They really didn’t trust him after all that he had done. 

He compromised the entire mission and for what, seven more hours of life? For the _guess_ that Red’s plan wouldn’t work? He had to be the worst imposter.

Faintly he could feel White shaking him, “Pink! Hey! Are you alright?”

“No not really. I thought they trusted me more than that” Pink admitted, sounding defeated.

“Yeah, I think they just need to calm down a bit. It’s okay Pink. Just tell me you put the wires in there”.

“I... Yeah I put the wires in there”.

White nodded, and took Pinks hand, leading him to the cafeteria as the emergency meeting buzzer went off.

As they entered they could hear Blue say “you don’t need to press it idiot we’re all already here”, earning her a shove from Orange. Those two looked like they trusted each other.

“Pink! What do you have to say for yourself?” Orange asked as he pointed a finger at Pink, everyone at the table turned to him.

“Okay so are we going to lead with that, or are we going to start with telling me what happened, because as far as I can tell everyone is still alive”, asked Black, being the only one who wasn’t in storage for the whole fiasco.

“Pink lied about doing his tasks, and could have compromised the ship in doing so, “ explained Blue, “which is a rather imposterish thing to do”.

“Pink is new and completed a task the wrong way and Orange and Blue are being hyper paranoid about it” corrected White.

Black looked between the two groups testifying and sighed.

“This is dumb, didn’t Pink take out Red for us?”.

There were murmurs around the group but Orange wasn’t done with his interrogation.

“So? _Maybe_ he’s just trying to save his own skin! Or wires I guess. And isn’t anyone a little suspicious that wires were the thing that went missing?”

Pink was still frozen, all of the conversation around him drowned out by the buzzing of his own wires, all sentences seeming accusatory, no matter if they were in favor of him or not. This was surely the end. Why didn’t they trust him? He did everything right.

“Pink? You alright?”, was the thing that brought him back.

White was still next to him, trying to get a response. How nice. White seemed to be the only one who didn’t want him gone.

Pink wanted to make a noise, any human noise really, but found that he still couldn’t as he collapsed and landed on his ‘knees’.

_ “Pink just tell us whatever comes to you first”, someone said. _

_ “Tell us the truth Pink”. _

_ “He’s going to lie”. _

None of them trusted him? Why? After everything. After _everything_. 

And Pink realized that he was a fool. He could only create a sob.

  
  


  
  


“I thought I was among friends”.


	7. Whaaaaaaaat scanner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pink meets someone :)

Imposters. Born of strange bacteria and wires, spreading across the universe and taking over small human bases full of the tangled electric goodies they craved. However bacteria needs a certain environment to grow, needless to say, the cold vacuum of space is not that environment.

The only known ways to kill an imposter currently are extreme heat, (not a good idea on a space ship), cold (it would be cold enough to kill the crew mates too, so also a no in space), or throwing them into space.

While planets were currently safe from infection, every once and a while there would be an attack, and imposter bacteria would spread out across a whole building. They kill the electricity and the people, but die while trying to escape.

Another problem, they’re getting smarter. Picking up items, taking certain shape, stealing human items: suits, knives, guns. The imposters learned the human language, learned how to speak, which no one has figured out, and have begun infiltrating ships with coordinated attack, the attacks getting harder and harder to counteract.

It’s like the imposters are becoming the copies of humans to take them out.

Pink hadn’t thought about it often, but imposters only found more wires in human bases, humans made wires. If humans made wires, why wipe them out? It didn’t make sense but his instincts told him otherwise and he had obeyed, taking the training from the older imposters and running with it.

But now Pink abandoned that training. He was going to go on a fun little space adventure and have a good time, then die. Isn’t that all anybody ever did, really?

———————————————————

When Pink was able to reactivate his wires, coming back from the only sort of sleep he had ever experienced because he over heated, he was locked in the safety room. Thankfully his wires had been tied together in a way that the wires kept their humanish shape, and making sure no one was around, he adjusted them more.

What happened? They were suspicious of him, at least. It may be worse, they might’ve checked if he was human. Pink was locked in for a few for minutes before someone came to the door to check on him.

“Pink? You up?” came Green’s voice through the door.

Oh thank goodness it was Green, she was ‘sweeter than molasses’ as Orange had said at some point, which meant she was very nice.

Pink didn’t know if could deal with any more suspicion right now, and Green probably trusted him, if anyone.

“Yeah, I’m up”.

A jingling sound was heard, then a click as Green unlocked the door, a pushed it open a hair.

“You’re not like, an _alien_ or anything like right?”

“Well I wasn’t born on Earth-“

“That’s not what I mean Pink stop joking around most of us aren’t from Earth” she said shaking her head, “White wanted me to take you to Medbay and give you a check up” she pushed open the door more. Greeen beckoned for him.

“We’re going to put you on the scanner, and check you for injuries and you know, to check that you’re human”.

Pink’s life expectancy timer winded down to about three minutes with that statement from Green. There was no way he was showing up as human on the scanner. As they climbed down the ladder, Pink waved at White, who was sitting next to Blue and Yellow in the cafeteria. White didn’t respond, instead walking off toward the head of the ship by himself.

Pink entered the medical room with Green, taking in the one room on the left side he hadn’t been in. There were four cots, two on either side, a large plateform was in the right corner of the room, and an expensive looking computer sat next to it.

Green took a look at the computer, then pressed a button completing a previous task that she had to let the computer sort through, one of the engines had been leaking an anomalous fluid.

“Ok Pink step up on the scanner! This’ll all be over in about a minute”.

“Aren’t you afraid to not have anyone else in here with you?”

“No, I’m sure you wouldn’t kill me Pink, you’ve shown us a heart of gold”.

She pressed a button as Pink got onto the scanner. Here goes nothing.

A green light flickered on at the bottom of the scanner as metal poles raised slowly into the air with a creek, just as the green light was about to get over his ankles, an emergency meeting was called by Black.

Pink practically fell over himself trying to get off of the scanner. Green looked at the computer and huffed,

“Pink! You messed up the scan your feet look all weird! Whatever, we’ll do this later”.

Pink was saved by something, and he wanted to know what.

Black was standing at the table with everyone else, apart from White. The crew could hear the Skeld’s precision thrusters turn on, and they began to change course slightly.

“Hey, the offload ship decided to meet us out here because they were able to pick up our distress signals. We’re all going to line up to meet as and check for imposters”.

Pink still wasn’t off the hook, now he was going to have to face military space force. He was sure that whatever was about to happen if he got into the hands of the human military was much worse than simply dying out in the cold of space.

And so, they all meandered to storage as Black explained, “White is parking us next to the ship, we’ll get inspected then unload”.

Just as they got to the metal door next to the tiny windows on the far side of storage, the Skeld rattled a bit as it settled next to the other ship. White ran over soon after and after a green light flashed, pulled a leaver that opened the door revealing that the two ships had been connected.

The other ship was much smaller, three small boxes were scattered in the one large storage room, a small laptop on one of them. There were seats along the walls and a door that probably lead to the control room.

“Captain James, aka Cyan, report”, demanded a voice form a brown space suit, the suit was much more advanced than the crew of the Skeld’s. It had green plating like armor and a helmet. She was also carrying a gun.

The members of the Skeld looked at each other and then to White. White stepped forward, “ma’am, in the absence of Captain James, I am Cadet Harris, White”.

She shook her head, “The absence? Is he dead? Where is your first mate?”.

Black stepped forward, “ Yo, I’m not a first mate but I was the next best choice”.

White face palmed at Black’s wording as the officer tightened her grip on her gun. 

“Ok kiddos what’s the situation, this better be good”.

“Well,” White started, “we were sent up without the Captain or first mate but I had already run the route so we decided to go with it, while being careful of corse, we ended up ejecting Red, who was a very much confirmed imposter”.

“Hmm, we’ll I’m impressed. How many missions have you all been on?”

“Three” said White.

“Two” said Black, Purple and Orange

“One” said Green, Pink, Blue, and Yellow.

“WHAT” said the officer, startled.

“You all should not go on a mission alone with that little experience! Is this why you requested we come out?”

“Yes, and did you bring the dogs?” White replied, and Brown waved to the control room doors as they opened and a dog came out.

Humans had figured out how to breed dogs that could withstand space and the poor quality of air that was generally in ships, they were space dogs. Pink had never been this close to a dog, it was big and fluffy, it had droopy eyes and floppy ears. It was white on its belly, brown on its back, slightly darker brown on its head, and had a great big smile.

The officer led the dog to everyone, starting with White. The dog gave him a good sniff where his zipper was, and barked once. As the officer relaxed a bit, Pink could tell that this was the all clear bark.

There were three more people in line before him, he needed a plan fast. Rummaging around in his suit, he pushed his knife that he hadn’t used yet, and any large wires to the back, but he felt a lump. What was that?

Some sort of bag? The dog was one away now. No time to think. He opened whatever the bag was and shoved it to where his zipper was.

The dog came over and sniffed, he let out a happy pant and barked once. Pink reached down and pet the dog, thankful for its happy-go-lucky idiocy. Whatever was in the bag must have smelled good.

Food! It was the food that Pink had to pretend to eat! He had never put it anywhere else, the dog must have smelled that instead of the wires.

The dog gave him happy pants, then walked over to the next astronaut in line. The crew mates of the Skeld looked anywhere but at Pink, guilty that they thought he was an imposter.

Once the check was done, the officer cleared them for work and they started moving boxes into the second ship. Brown looked around at all the crew mates working together, and wondered aloud, “Who were you all suspicious of?”.

All the helmets turned to pink, who was moving a small box by himself.

“Why?”.

“Well he did a task wrong and we were all still worried over wether there was another imposter so we may have over reacted”, said Blue.

It was nice to know she was sorry, but Pink knew that her haunch had been correct.

“It didn’t even make sense that we thought it was Pink, he found all the messed up wires”, joined in Yellow.

“He stopped Red from _snapping my neck_ ”, said White bluntly, “ of course it wasn’t him”.

There was more awkward shuffling after that comment, and the crew got to work again.

———————————————————

In the bunks of the Skeld, little beds sat, some messily made, having been slept in, and some were neatly tucked.

A small table sat in the middle of the room, a deck of cards on top of it.

In the back of the room, two lockers sat, an extra suit in one. In case of an emergency.

While the ship was being offloaded, no one had time to look around the ship. No one had time to see the single little wire slip into a pile

No one had time to see it creep up into thebunks and swing open the locker. 

—————————————————————

T h e r ea r e t w o   
i m p o s t e r s  a m o n gu s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey yo, just wanted to thank everyone for the support on this :D means a lot. I’m actually going to be taking a creative writing class soon so if really helps.


	8. Whaaaaaaat suit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pink follows the vents

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *listens to Saint Bernard 2 on repeat for 3 hours* *listens to Saint Bernard 2 on repeat for 3 hours* *listens to Saint Bernard 2 on repeat for 3 hours*

It wasn’t long before they bid the Officer farewell and turned the Skeld back toward their home planet. White had apologized for being distant from Pink, mumbling something about not wanting to see it confirmed that his trusted friend on the ship could’ve been an imposter.

Green waved off the scanning, telling him that the old thing had limited uses and costed a lot to operate. She trusted the dog that had sniffed him.

Speaking of dogs, it was the first time Pink had ever seen a dog and honestly? He couldn’t have been happier with it. The dog looked very fluffy, Pink wished that he could’ve used his wires to brush it.

The crew mates continued doing their tasks around the ship, paying less mind to things now that it was confirmed there were no imposters on the ship. Pink finished uploading data to the admin room again and walked into the cafeteria to find a conversation going on.

“ That doesn’t mean they’ll believe us, does it?” Said Yellow.

Orange shifted in his seat and responded,  “Even if they don’t believe us they won’t care. They were reckless enough to shove nine cadets in a ship without the Captain it’s their own fault”.

“What are we talking about?” asked Pink to the group. 

“Wether or not HQ is going to believe our story, they’re worried no one will believe Red was an imposter. For some reason” said Black, clearly not convinced.

“It’s a valid worry Black!” whispered Green across the table. 

“It’s not. An attack just happened it’s actually more likely that they’ll believe us” countered White.

An interesting conversation to say the least, but Pink was more worried about what would happen when they could take off their helmets again. What would exactly happen when they figured out Pink was just a hundred wires in a trench coat?

There was a rattling from the vent in the cafeteria but was gone before anyone really gave it any thought, anyone but Pink. Pink stared at the vent, and tip toed over to it. Horrified to see two screws out of place. 

He lifted and shut it. It was like a hinge. 

By that point the others had gotten curious as to what Pink was doing and joined him.

“Why’d you open that Pink?” asked Blue.

“I didn’t, did one of you?”

A soft “no” could be heard from most of them, followed by silence.

Then an ear splitting screech from the other side of the ship. 

Using what he remembered from what Red and White told him about vents, Pink ran as fast as he could to the shields room, the rest of the crew behind him. He pushed his knife the to front of his suit, getting ready for anything. 

What he found in shields was honestly not what he was expecting. There was a saggy cyan suit, in a roughly humanoid shape, holding up Purple by the collar of her space suit with a wire.

Pink dashed forward, knife in hand now, and cut the wire. It squirmed it’s way back to the suit, and it left out a howling laughter. 

“Didn’t I say I’d kill you Pink?”,

Pink shivered with fear as he recognized who it was,

“I’LL KILL THEM ALL”. 

Red, now Cyan, rushes toward toward him, tryingto steal his knife. Pink stepped to the side and yelled, “I won’t let you hurt any of them!”

“Even the ones who found you out? The ones who wouldn’t think twice about what you almost did for them as they let you tumble out into space and die?”

“Almost did?”

“ _Almost_ , dear Pink”, Cyan said as he threw another wire at Pink. 

“You _almost_ saved them all”.

Pink put up the knife to defend himself, but didn’t realize that the wires weren’t directed toward him. The sharp copper wires cut straight through Purple’s suit.

She tumbled to the ground, a large gash in her suit, “Don’t worry Pink, keep fighting it’s just a scratch. He only got my suit”.

“Oh no don’t worry sweetheart, the radiation poisoning will kill you before I do, it’s amazing that they let you humans drive these things around still”, Cyan said, taking another shot at her.

However, White forced Cyan into a giant bear hug, and Blue caught the wire that was headed for Purple. 

“NO. NOT AGAIN”, screamed Cyan as he squirmed against the crew. 

The wires almost got out of the suit, but so many of them were hugging it at that point that cyan really couldn’t do anything.

His screaming turned into high pitched tones as they started walking with him wrapped in the suit.

Escorting him to the ejection chambers once again, the crew tossed him in, hit the button, and watched him fly through space.

—————————————————————

Green was in Medbay with Purple, trying to stick a bandage on her after disinfecting the cut. A large part of Purple’s suit was torn, and a smaller part of her under suit where she was actually injured.

“Purple we have to get you that extra suit in bunks, we still have twenty four hours left heading back, we can’t let you be exposed to radiation for that long”.

“That was the extra suit”, said Pink, who had come in to check up on Purple.

“What? Oh you mean that the—“ Green stopped and looked like she was going to throw up.

“The imposter used the extra suit”, said Purple, sounding defeated.

“Its alright maybe we can just tape it back together?” Pink suggested, not knowing the specifics of the suit.

“No,” sighed Green, “the stuff keeping the radiation out is too damaged for that to work completely, but it’s all we have.

Purple could die if she didn’t have a suit. Pink didn’t need a suit.

“She can have mine”.

“You’re out of your mind, no”, cried Purple, “I’m going to live, don’t try to be the hero. Just let it happen”.

“No. Take my suit”.

“No!”

“Purple take it!”

“No!”

Green had run out of the room to throw up into a garbage chute, she apparently didn’t deal with these types of conversations very well.

“Purple just take. My. Suit”.

“And let you get poisoned too?”.

“I won’t get poisoned”.

“What?”.

Pink stepped backward carefully, and then hit the panel next to the door, shutting and locking it.

Purple scrambling back on her cot as Pink walked toward her, taking off his helmet. Purple was surprised to see no hair, skin, eyes, ears, or nose. She didn’t see anything, a head wasn’t really required to look like a human in one of the suits. He looked headless.

Unzipping the suit, the mass of wires stepped out, and jumbled into an inhuman form, looking more like a blob. The suit and helmet were shifted in Purple’s direction.

Slightly panicked and in shock at this point, she took them and quickly unzipped her suit, handing them to the imposter. He crawled into the suit where it was ripped at put on the helmet.

It was torn from the armpit to about the stomach, a flap hanging open and exposing the wires.

“What’s your name?” He asked the now Pink.

“Stella, my name is Stella. What’s yours?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. The room was tense as she put on the suit, sealing it tight with the helmet.

“Name?” Stella asked again.

“Bernard”.

He decided to go with Bernard. He had asked White what type of dog he met, and it was a Saint Bernard. It sounded like a good name to him.

All he got from Stella was a nod.

“What do we do now?” She asked him, looking into where a human head would be, but quickly looking away knowing there wasn’t a head.

“Well. What do you normally do when you find an imposter Pu— Stella?”.

She got up and he opened the door for her, she walked into the cafeteria, and hit the button on the table.

And everyone gathered around, looking at the Pink suit, as she raised her hand to say “I, Stella, am starting a vote. All in favor to kick out Bernard, formerly known as Pink?”.

Bernard raised his hand, his torn suit lifting up a little to reveal the wires more.

And then everyone noticed, there was still an imposter among them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) one more chapter y’all 
> 
> Ty for support


	9. Whaaaaaaat happy ending?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> People: man I hope Bernard can stay with the crew!
> 
> Me: uh huh huh uhhhh huh hhhhuuuuuuuuuhhh..... uuuuuuuh haha... uhhhh unmmm hahaha

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!!! I just wanted to say thanks for all the support, this took me a whole week to write, so I hope it’s good!

Harris got into Sam’s car. Her car was small and had some trash in it, and the outside was black like her suit .

It had been a rough couple of days while the crew and ship were checked for more signs of imposters. There was almost endless questioning of what had happened, and HQ had reason to believe that the crew was lying about Bernard.

It was shocking to say the least, when Bernard revealed himself to be a giant pile of wires. Harris was pretty sure he saw some of the wires that Bernard was supposed to eject into space in his suit. There was an acute feeling of betrayal and fear, that was oddly trumped by hope. Hope that If Bernard could just stay with them, and make it back, he’d be able to stay. 

Harris knew that hope was false as soon as he had it. There wasn’t a way that Bernard could stay with them. It was crushing. The happenings in the Skeld began to shift into place in his mind, and he knew Bernard would have killed them if he thought he could get away with it. He wouldn’t have asked to keep the vents a secret. He wouldn’t have taken those wires. He wouldn’t have kept a knife in his suit. 

But other things he did didn’t fit into place in the story either. Why did he attack Red? Why didn’t he attack Green while they were alone? Why did he attack Cyan? Why did he give Purple his suit? None of it made sense. 

Eventually the HQ came to the conclusion that the crew had become delusional from being in that situation for so long, and had tricked themselves into thinking that Bernard was helping them. It might have made a little bit of sense, that they trusted him so much that they forgot to see him when he was being suspicious. To the crew however, the situation still didn’t make sense with that conclusion, and the HQ decided to ignore that.

When they pointed out that Green was alone with Bernard, HQ pointed out the strange thing he had said about being able to murder her, only unable to because of the meeting. Then the crew recalled him fighting Cyan, the HQ recalled that throwing out Cyan was the only way to keep himself safe, and he let Stella get cut which could have killed her. When Stella argues that Bernard gave her his suit, they argued that he probably locked her in the room to kill her, and she was lucky that the door unlocked in time for her to press the emergency button. 

The crew was livid and couldn’t do anything about it. Their minds twisted and not being able to tell fiction from reality, they were sent home with high praise and the promise of an award ceremony for their bravery. After all, it was unheard of for a group of eight newbies, with no captain, to take down three imposters with no deaths to the crew. 

Anyone who survived imposter attacks were given medals. The very next day they were called back and the award ceremony commenced, just as promised. Backwards retelling of the crew’s story and all, they were handled medals of bravery from the 3rd quadrant military; Officer Brown actually came out to hand them the awards, she was impressed that they were able to pick out the imposter despite him being cleared and trusted. 

Along with the medals, they were evaluated on how well they ran the ship, garnering almost perfect scores from professionals who inspected it. It wasn’t difficult to keep a Skeld in working order, but it was still impressive. Most crews would panic without a captain. 

Cadet Joseph Crenshaw (Joey), known as Yellow, and Cadet Stella Bright, known as Purple, were signed on as permanent members of the Skeld. They would be looking for new members along with CaptainLuka Riff and First mate Leeya Riff, who were supposed to be on the crew instead of the two imposters.

Cadet Samantha Croft, known as Black, was taken in by the botany department because of her notes on the Skeld’s inadequate O2 system. Cadets Octavia Moyer, known as Blue, and Maurice Chase, known as Orange, were taken in by the investigation and information department, for their deductions on the Skeld. They were the ones who had figured Bernard out, and showed promise according to HQ. 

Cadet Yazmin Haines, known as Green, chose to study with the medical department, so that next time she went into space, she would hopefully be a nurse for the military. 

As for Cadet Harris Whyte, he was offered a position of first mate on the Mira HQ. A new space craft to be used as a space station for all third quadrant ships to communicate with. To be fair, just about half of the crew was going to be made up of former captains and first mates, however he was offered the position by Captain Reese Bloom, known for their gold suit and flower hat. They had been the only survivor of the Scalloway when it was attacked. It was a high offer that he really couldn’t turn down. He would be second in command after learning about the ship, and would hopefully help prevent incidents like the one on the Skeld from happening. 

Of course, he had trepidations about this job, but—

“Harris are you alright?”

Oh right he was in Sam’s car. They were pulling out of the company parking garage now, onto the busy street, people still exiting from the ceremony. A few waved to them, and some waves were given back. 

“I guess. It’s a lot to take in still” he responded, and looked out toward the countryside as Sam turned onto the highway. 

They were being sent home for a month, to recover. Harris and Sam ended up living about ten minutes away from each other, so Sam offered to drive him. He would’ve had to take the bus otherwise, not something he wanted to do after becoming flash famous for taking out multiple aliens.

“I wish that didn’t happen if I’m being honest. It’s not cool. They’re just going to ignore our story—“

“And we cant do anything about it. He’s dead”.

“Yeah”.

That was the end of that conversation. Harris felt bad for being snappy about it, but he and Bernard had bonded on that trip. He considered the Pink suit his best friend after he had saved Harris’s life. 

The crew had been questioned on what the most difficult part of the trip was in the public interview. Blue was left to answer it, in front of that giant crowd of people. She stood in front of the microphone and told a bold faced lie, 

_ “The hardest part by far was figuring out who it was”. _

Only one of the imposters was difficult to figure out, it was Bernard. Cyan was taken down easily and then there was Red, who was given up by Bernard. 

Figuring out it was Bernard wasn’t the actual problem, no one wanted to throw him out. That was the hardest part of the mission.

The HQ told them that they couldn’t admit to being attached to an imposter in front of so many people, so begrudgingly they didn’t. Blue had to do it, she was good at keeping her cool, and delivered the line with confidence. No one knew she had lied. 

———————————————————

Harris looked toward the purple suit, who he thought it was Purple, but now Purple’s voice came from Pink’s suit. And Pink called herself Stella, then called whoever was in the Purple suit Bernard. 

It was a confusing situation. What was more confusing, is that the so-called Bernard raised his hand to vote himself out. 

Didn’t Purple’s suit have a massive tear in it from the fight? Why was somebody else wearing it? Wait why was who used to be Pink, presumably Bernard, wearing Purple’s suit? Why did he trade her, he was going to get radiation poisoning! Why did Stella ask them to vote him out? 

And in the instant that Bernard raised his hand fully into the air, Harris understood. He didn’t want to understand, his head started pounding, it just couldn’t be possible. 

Thick rows of tied together wires sat in Bernards suit, some sticking out. Harris saw some of the tell-tale colors of the wires from the ship in the suit, so he did take them after all. 

There was a collective gasp around the group, while Orange and Blue immediately raised their hands. The others were still reeling from the shock, and Yellow had started trembling. 

Harris looked around at the others, and saw Green raise her hand slowly. 

“Is that... why your feet looked weird on the scanner?”

Bernard’s suit nodded, “Yeah”.

White looked around the table,” were not actually going to vote him off are we? He’s saved our lives!”

Yellow shook his head, raising his hand, “we have to”.

Black looked to White, and back to the group, “there’s totally something wrong with this guys. He’s helped us”. 

“Bernard why aren’t you defending yourself? Don’t you want to live?” Harris yelled at the purple suit, he saw the mass of wires wiggle around a bit. It sort of looked as if that was the equivalent of a nervous shuffle. 

“I’m not going to. I’d rather go out like this if it’s alright with all of you”, Bernard responded, and Harris couldn’t believe it.

Why? Why?

Why?

————————————————————

He stepped onto the sidewalk, out of Sam’s car, toward his apartment building. He turned to wave to Sam, who waved back.

“Hey man, don’t go doing anything stupid alright? I’ll see you around”, she said, putting her car back into drive.

“I won’t”, Harris responded softly, and turned to his building, going in. 

Up the stairs, get out his keys, unlock the door, and be greeted by a hungry cat, meowing for food. After feeding her he went to get his sewing kit. 

Each cadet was taught how to sew among other things, so he had gained some skill and it became a hobby. Just before the trip he had made a little plushie for his niece’sbirthday. Since he was going to be on vacation for a month he may as well start on something. 

The vacation was going to be a nice little break, he hadn’t been on ships very long but he could already tell it was a dangerous trade. He wanted to take his mind off of it as he looked through a bin of cloth, his mind wondered off to Bernard again.

————————————————————

Stella, Harris, and Bernard climbed up the ladder into the kitchen, and headed for the safety room. Black had eventually voted for Bernard, but Harris skipped voting, knowing that it didn’t matter what he did. He had already made up his mind about the matter, and felt like he could only talk to Black after this.

Stella opened the door to the ejection chamber, but turned before Bernard could step in and hugged him, which Harris didn’t expect. He could hear her now, she was crying. 

“Thank you. You saved my life twice, I won’t forget it”, she sniffled as Bernard hugged her back, and said “yeah no problem”.

Stella looked up to him, “why did you help us?”

Bernard went silent for a minute, and responded “we need human inventions to live. It doesn’t exactly make sense to kill humans when we’ll die out right after”.

Stella nodded her head, but didn’t look satisfied with the answer. Harris places a hand on Stella’s shoulder, “Hey can I have a minute with him?”

“Yeah I’ll be in the cafeteria, bye Bernard...”, and she left, her footsteps almost echoing in the metal ship. 

“I just couldn’t kill any of you, even when Red set it up perfectly, I couldn’t let you die”, he said quieter than before, and Harris remembered when Bernard literally took out his teammate to save Harris. 

“Why’d you do that?”

“I convinced myself that we were friends I think”, Harris thought back to Bernard passing out during the meeting Blue had called, recalling the words 

_ “I thought I was among friends”. _

“We’re friends Bernard”.

Bernard’s helmet looked up to Harris, “Are we?”.

“Yeah I’m your friend. Of course we’re friends”. White kicked the ground, how did he go about this...

“Can I ask something from you?”

————————————————————

Harris had an idea, since he was going to be on the Mira HQ as something other than a cadet, he was officially allowed to have a hat. Hat was a simpler term, it was really just ‘whatever you can keep on your head’, once he saw two suits with a wet floor sign and flower pot on their heads, that was impressive.

Harris pulled out the pink fabric from his bin, the shade was a little lighter than he wanted it but that was fine, it would do. He also grabbed the old suit that Bernard had inhabited, pulling off the visor. He took a needle and thread and started to sew a tiny space suit. 

He was going to make a mini Bernard to put on as his hat. The HQ higher ups would be the only ones able to call him out for it, as no one else knew the meaning the little plushie would have. 

Bernard laughed, thinking about stuffing it with wires. He went to his closet and rummaged around, pulling out old wires he hadn’t gotten around to recycling, which was a lot because his closet was a giant mess.

Setting the plushie up, it almost looked like an exact copy, if only it could actually be— wait

————————————————————

“Are you sure you want to have that?”

“Very, you have no idea how helpful this could be”

“And the suit? You want that too?”

“That one is for a more personal reason honestly” 

“Alright if you want, how is it going to be helpful?”

“If I can see the DNA of your bacteria it could be ground breaking Bernard, we’ve never seen an imposter who can make friends! Imposters evolve fast, you may be a new kind”

“I just don’t think it’s a great idea, I could’ve hurt you all still”

“Not wanting to harm anyone doesn’t make you more human it makes you like a stupid lovey dog”

“...fine, but keep it in a baggie, and don’t show it to them until after you’re sure they’ll use it for good”

And Bernard handed him a single wire.

————————————————————

Harris ran to his room, he had hidden the bag in his suit while the HQ was doing inspections, and he absolutely wasn’t going to give it to them. They obviously had no interest in believing that an imposter could be okay, let alone save a life. Giving it to them would be the fastest firing and imprisonment he’d ever seen, no he wasn’t going to give them the wire.

Harris obtained the bag, running back to his living room where he had been seeing, and shooed his cat away from the Pink doll. 

He took the wire out of the bag and put it into the doll, hoping. 

A few hours had passed, and nothing had really happened yet, Harris was worried, but knew that the bacteria should be growing. Getting up to make his dinner, he decided that he had to take a break for the night. He had been worrying about the possible outcomes of what he just did for a while and it was starting to get to him. 

He shoved a pot onto the stove and threw some canned soup into it to heat it up. Harris took a quick peek back into the living room to make sure nothing had changed, but it had. The doll looked different, like it was better filled. The visor that Harris had cut to fit the doll was shifted too, now facing the door of the apartment rather than the couch. The doll had turned around. 

The pot behind Harris began to bubble, and he ran to get it off the stove. Turning back toward the exit of the kitchen he was faced by what was hopefully Bernard. The doll was simple, not really a great recreation of the suit, more of an oval with legs and a visor. He figured that giving it arms might be too much for now. 

“Bernard?” Harris asked, afraid of a different answer.

“You said you’d use it for science!”.

“This is science! I’m doctor freaking Frankenstein!”!

“This is stupid is what this is!”

It was a good night. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!! 
> 
> I’m thinking about doing small side stories that are like 2-3 chapters or so of what happened to the Scalloway (the other ship that got infested it would probably be Red’s POV) or a little story about Harris’s life on Mira HQ. :) idk though we’ll have to see how I feel I guess.

**Author's Note:**

> Please tell me how that was / any errors :) thanks much appreciated


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